Yesterday our views of the striped hyena in Velavadar were brief and some of my clients did not see it. Our views of the three wolves, in the crushing, distorting heat of the Gujarati afternoon, were very distant. In the crisp cool light of this morning we saw both species beautifully.

Having left the hyena cubs in their den last night, this morning we went to them as soon as the park gates opened at seven. It seemed at first as though they had already gone to earth for the day, but soon a pair of great ears twitched above the light grasses and one cub, an exquisite faded gold with soft charcoal stripes, padded home. Soon it was joined by another and my three jeeps watched in silence as these two young animals raised their blunt big noses at the coming day and took to their den.

The rest of the morning we spent with wolves. The first was seen not far from the track, in the edge of a patch of thornscrub on which greater spotted eagles perched and through which crows flapped. Inside it seemed was a kill. Long-legged and lean, this wolf moved through the front of the scrub and inside, seen and unseen between and behind acacias.

Then it was lost and, sadly, a feral dog came to the kill, so we left. But, stopping at a tower to scan the grass, one of my clients found a second wolf, distant but coming closer. Across the plain and over a short-grass fireline we saw it pass: big tan ears and brindled flanks and a gait that looked easy, lazy even, but which covered ground with deceptive speed. Frightening speed if you are the wolf's prey.

This wolf left the park in the distance. Amazingly the first reappeared, visiting a waterhole to our left; we had unwittingly disturbed its course to another waterhole in the early morning. Behind the bank it drank, then emerged to follow the same path as the first, languidly crossing the fireline and the park's grass before us.

Just ten days ago I was watching wild dogs in Kanha, bright sparks of canid energy, always alert, always on the move. The wolf's mien is quite different. Its energy is latent. There is spring in its gait but no hurry. There is attention in its gaze but no fuss. Focus and relaxation in one beauteous, plains-treading animal.

We saw much more in Velavadar this morning, We will be there again this afternoon, with chestnut-bellied sandgrouse coming to the waterholes and wild boar bashing through the small trees. With Montagu's harriers, wolf-like in their ease of movement, over the plains, and larks - ashy-crowned sparrow-lark, crested, greater short-toed, rufous-tailed - filling the afternoon's heat with the purr of their wings and the chime and chatter of their throats. We may perhaps see again the naar, the wolf, the jarakh, the hyena, or any other of the secrets of this wild place of dust and sun and heat and grass and smiles.

Everybody at Velavadar seems to have big ears. Everybody carnivorous that is. The ears of the hundreds of graceful blackbuck are typically antilopine (it's a word, I promise, though bizarrely used mostly to describe kangaroos). So too those of the many muscle-massive nilgai standing in the shade of acacias on the plain.

More remarkable are the ears of the predators here. As we drive along a dirt track in the solid heat of a Gujarati afternoon, our quiet, razor-eyed driver Haider (primed, I later learn, by the knowledge of a den) picks up a dot on the retaining bank of a waterhole many hundreds of metres away. Through binoculars it is the head of a dot with very large ears. All the better for losing heat with. It turns its face, this dot, revealing a long square snout. All the better for smelling with. This dot is an Indian wolf, one of only thirteen individuals believed to be in Velavadar.

We drive along another road, to get closer and to have the sun on our backs. From here, though they are still distant, we can see three wolves. One adult rests at the base of the bank in the heat, like - and yet so unlike - my mother's dogs piled against the Aga. A well-grown pup is silhouetted at the corner of the bank, glowing gold in the afternoon light. A third animal, another adult, lopes to the edge of nearby scrub.

They are rangy these wolves, lean and spare. Jackal-like perhaps, though long-legged, big-eared and powerful, even at this distance. It is marvellous that a single species can so well adapt to semideserts in Gujarat and snow-fields in Ladakh, without mention of the countless other habitats that wolves roamed and owned across the world before humans drove them out.

We leave this lean family to their rest in the heat and drive to the home of another family, bigger eared still. As we reach a well-known den, some fifty metres from the road in the grass, a four-month striped hyena cub, round-shouldered and huge-eared, is ambling through the gilt grass. It slumps to its den and, for today, is gone. We will try for both wolves and hyenas again tomorrow.

As he turns the jeep, further on, Haider's quick eyes spot a jungle cat in the grass. But this jungle cat's ears are far too big. Its black tail-tip, sharp nose and quick bright eyes tell us this is an Indian fox. It trots away through the grass, with the light-footed, mischievous spring of foxes the world over.

Today we have seen no cats. But we have seen three species of carnivore, each beautiful and beautifully adapted to this rare, demanding environment. Tomorrow we return to the park and will hope to see more of the wildlife that hides in its breeze-rippled grass.

A young male blackbuck attempting to impress

The park's only white blackbuck (a whitebuck?)
is second from the right

Saturday, 28 March 2015

After almost a month sweating in the jungles of central India, it seems hardly possible that so recently I was in Ladakh with an intrepid band of snow-leopard-watchers. However, while I have been out of the range of the internet, I have received many photos from the clients - now friends - of my 2015 snow leopard tour with Naturetrek. With their permission, I reproduce some of them here,

Dog at Shey Gompa by Nick Baker

Tea in Norboo's house in Ulley by Nick Baker

Snow leopard in Ulley by Richard Hurrell

Snow leopard by Richard Hurrell

Snow leopard by Richard Hurrell

A local lad watching a snow leopard with us in Ulley
by Nick Baker

Snow leopard in Ulley by Giovanni Mari

The walk into camp in the Rumbak Valley
by Stan da Prato

Our bags carried into camp
by Stan da Prato

Large-eared pika at Lato by Stan da Prato

Denzel the camp yak by Stan da Prato

Denzel by Stan da Prato
(sounds like the name of a perfume)

Camp in the Rumbak Valley
by Stan da Prato

The start of the snowstorm in the Rumbak Valley
by Stan da Prato

Camp in the snow by Stan da Prato

Water being brought from the river through holes chipped in the ice
by Stan da Prato

On arrival in Reni Pani, the beautiful lodge which Naturetrek uses in Satpura Tiger Reserve, I told our guide Amith and lodge-owner Ali that at all costs I wanted to see a rusty-spotted cat. I went further: with my tongue firmly in my cheek I told them that should they fail to find me a rusty-spotted cat I would destroy the lodge's reputation with one stroke of my blogging finger.

We failed to find a rusty-spotted cat, despite heroic efforts on Amith's part. Our attempts to see them, with my Naturetrek Satpura extension group, were hampered by recent cold, wet weather (gone now, but its effects on wildlife are apparently still being felt) and by the park's edict, the very day we arrived, that lamping for wildlife by night is forbidden. We have made every effort to see one, without flouting the park's new regulation, but the world's smallest cat has eluded me. It is in fact the first feline which I had a reasonable chance of seeing in 2015 which I have failed to see.

It does not matter. It would have been wonderful to have seen one on my Big Cat Quest but it has been more than wonderful to stay at Reni Pani and to learn from wise, kindly Amith about the lovely forests of Satpura. This is a place where the strange songs of Indian and savannah nightjars puncture the hot air of the night. This is a place where blackbuck bound over golden cereals, ripe for harvest, in the fields of local villages. This is a place where handsome, smiling guides paddle even more broadly smiling Naturetrek clients in canoes: to see river terns and Indian skimmers building their nests on an island, as north-bound Temminck's and little stints display on the mud around them. This is a place where glossy gaur chomp the forest undergrowth and sloth bear mothers sway their shaggy heads as they walk, their scrap-like infants clinging to their humped black backs. This is a place of wild wonder.

I did not see a rusty-spotted cat but I do not care. I am grateful to Amith, to Ali and his friendly, efficient staff, and to everyone at Reni Pani for a serenely beautiful stay in Satpura. I leave central India with the jungle, its peerless wildlife and its gracious people, in my heart.

For a moment this afternoon a leopard sat on a rock above the road, its eyes and the sun searing into me.Yesterday a male tiger padded soundlessly along a forest track towards us. The jungle gives still.

Of all the animals of jungle India, the one I most long to see on every visit is the wild dog. There is a taut energy about the dogs which defies description in words. Where the tiger is laconic and the leopard disdainful, the wild dogs are wired.

This morning we came across a pack of five dogs, a pair and their three well-grown pups, on a sandy road through the sal forest of the Mukki zone in Kanha. They move, the dogs, in the manner of mercury, bright drops flowing along the road, parting and recombining as they go. These molten mammals slipped by our jeep and into the scented forest understorey, now seen as bewitching shadows behind a blind, as they trotted purposefully towards a stream. We pulled to the bridge and one by one the dogs dropped down the dusty bank, across the stream bed on neat feet, and up to the forest on the far side. At their head went a confident pup, followed by its parents, with two less bold pups in the rear.

As the rust-red dogs rippled over the stream's bank, the long white tails of chital rose in the brush and the deer bounded away. The dogs appeared on the road, one rolling like a wild wave towards the fleeing deer as if in hunting. A single chital fled the wrong way, back towards the stream, and for a moment one dog gave half-hearted chase; but the pack was in no mood to hunt, or judged the chase fruitless. The chital's time had not come. It will meet the dogs again one day, or a leopard, or a tiger, and pass its life back to the flickering magic of the Indian jungle.

Years ago, a tiger-expert friend Raghu was leading a tour here in Kanha. His English is self-taught and, being of great intelligence, he appropriates new expressions from conversation all around him. On this occasion, one of his jeeps returned to the lodge and he asked his clients how their morning had been and what they had seen. They replied that they had seen no mammals of note but that they had spent a pleasant morning birding. Raghu was unfamiliar with the expression. To date he had heard only of people birdwatching. Now he knew to take an animal's name and make it into a verb.

That afternoon he had an excellent sighting of the wild dogs.

A wild dog painted for me by a Naturetrek tour client
at the end of a marvellous tour

I love Kanha. If there were a self-help group for kanhaholics I would be its poster-boy. The park is a dreamily beautiful mix of tall, cool sal forest, grassland with drifts of deer, and plentiful waterholes. What's more, I know that my friends at Kanha Jungle Lodge - Dimple, Tarun, Vinod, Manoj, Dilip, Santosh and all their colleagues - will do everything in their power to ensure that Naturetrek's clients have a superb time here. Whenever we reach the Mukki gate of the park I'm greeted by guide friends from years back, all chiding me for not coming more often. I love Kanha.

In Kanha I can relax and do my job of sharing wildlife with people. And what wildlife there is here! Orange-headed thrushes turn the crisp sal leaves on the forest floor and brown-headed barbets purr from the tops of the trees. In the meadows the herds of chital and barasingha graze, twitching their big ears over the tall gold grasses. Wild boar scurry for cover and langurs chew contemplatively at the road's edge. This is a wondrous place.

Tigers though are on everyone's minds. Last night Vinod told me that the Mukki zone, where we stay, is enjoying the best tiger-watching in the park, the orange and black equivalent of a purple patch. Tigresses with well-grown cubs always make for the best tiger-watching and the eight-year-old Mahavir tigress has, at the moment, four cubs of ten months which have just this week begun to be seen. Our focus this morning was on them.

The park currently opens at six. By nine there had been no news of tigers so we called at Sondar camp for breakfast. As soon as our delicious food was laid before us there was frantic activity from the jeeps which had already eaten and were leaving the camp: the tigress was crossing Sondar meadow. We packed our hampers as fast as we could but reached the spot just too late. One of my jeeps was there and had seen the tigress well, the second was nowhere to be seen, while in my own jeep we had missed her by seconds.

We waited on the road, some distance from the patch of forest from which we could hear the cubs calling to their mother. Excitement pulsed through the few jeeps present as this solidly built, deep orange tigress, with a powerful chest and long white cheek tufts, emerged from the forest edge. She stood in the maidan and looked back to the trees, waiting for her cubs to follow. And this they did, tentatively and in stages. One cub, a perfect copy in miniature of its mother, was bold, joining her quickly. Two more arrived but soon scampered back to the safety of the trees. The fourth, a small, timid, tan-coloured cub, was slow to appear. Finally all the cubs joined their mother who marshalled them over the grass into a cordon of forest by the road. From here they crossed in front of us, into the forest, and were gone.

It's lunchtime at Kanha Jungle Lodge and I find I am very hungry. It doesn't do to go without breakfast.

Wednesday, 18 March 2015

Since recording this yesterday evening, we have seen another Pench tiger, as described here.

For the next four days I will be in beautiful Kanha National Park, in a lodge without wifi. Thereafter I move to Satpura; I have no idea whether I will be online there. I will post here when I next can. In the meantime stay safe and well. May tigers roam your dreams.

Tuesday, 17 March 2015

Pench and I have always had a complex relationship. I want dearly to love this beautiful park, but every time I come there is a logistical problem which makes my life, and my Indian colleague's life, a misery. This afternoon, despite the heroic efforts of my wonderful Indian co-leader Dilip, the fellow in charge of the gate took exception to our group and, against all the evidence, refused for forty-five hot, tense minutes to allow us into the park. We tried buying new tickets, we tried producing independent evidence that our tickets were in order, but our bureaucratic friend bluntly refused to look into his papers to see that all was in order. Eventually he relented and, in a trice, we were in.

It has, for all sorts of reasons, been a long, emotional day and, with just minutes to go before our evening meeting and dinner, I haven't the wit or the energy to write much. I am delighted, however, to say that all of our clients have now seen at least two tigers. This afternoon's was the fully-grown cub of Collar Wali whom we saw this morning, one of three brothers who have now left their mother to face life on their own, freeing her to give birth to a new litter soon.

He lay, our huge-pawed cub, in the sand. He rolled on his back and revealed his startling white belly, the very picture of relaxation. Soon though, his relaxation and his brothers' must end, when they are forced from their home by their father or an incoming male. For now let them roll in the sand in this beautiful park, with the soulful cries of the peacocks in their ears and the chital grazing placidly nearby between the trees.

The past few days have been miserable. While I was in Nagpur collecting my Tadoba group, the weather changed and the park's tigers all but disappeared. The week before I had been seeing tigers at least on every other drive, but suddenly there was nothing to see. One of my two Tadoba jeeps saw one tiger, briefly, once in six drives. The other saw no tiger. The week before it had been hard not to see a tiger. To make things worse, the jeep which saw the tiger promptly saw a remarkable leopard. The tigerless jeep, needless to say, did not.

In these situations my clients, kindly to a woman and man, either pretend they are not utterly crestfallen (those who have seen nothing) or feel guilty (the luckier ones) and work hard not to appear smug. As little control as my fantastic Indian colleagues and I have over the behaviour of wild tigers, we ourselves feel responsible and low. The situation makes for a difficult tour.

So it was with a leaden heart that I arrived in Pench to meet the four new members of our group arriving for the main tour. I'll let you into a little secret (in the hope that no-one from Naturetrek is reading this). I have seen tigers all over the north, northeast and centre of India. I have seen many tigers and have seen them doing most things it is possible to see tigers doing. However, in seven previous visits to Pench, I have never seen a tiger here. My past clients have seen very good tigers here, from other jeeps, but I have seen none. You can understand why today I was not over-brimming with confidence for the unlucky Tadoba jeep and the four newcomers.

This morning there were chital, langurs, rhesus macaques, peafowl and nilgai. There always are. There were plentiful chestnut-shouldered petronias and rufous treepies, there were greater racquet-tailed drongos and there were golden jackals. Then there was news of a tiger crossing a road. There was an alarm call from a sambar. I've heard it all so many times before in Pench. The tiger disappears into the rocky hills or into dense lantana. And it is never seen again.

We had breakfast, to the sound of plum-headed parakeets and white-naped woodpeckers. As we drove on, we met a jeep which had seen the tiger. It had moved again. So we sped to the spot and met half-a-dozen jeeps. The front jeep on the road was my unlucky jeep - the people whose experience of Tadoba had been so difficult - and casually wandering along the road in front of them was a tiger. I was with the four newcomers so, in a stroke, all twelve of my clients had seen a tiger!

I thought at first, by the tiger's size and gait from the rear, that it was a male. It soon became clear however that it was lacking in relevant anatomy. A female? But so heavy? So ponderous? She turned to one side, showing her handsome face and revealing herself to be a stately matron; and that she was radio-collared. I thought from her sagging belly and her swollen teats that she had recently given birth. Anil, our park guide, put me right: she is very soon expecting a litter, surely the last in the life of this veteran tiger of thirteen years.

She walked ahead of us for some fifteen minutes, with more jeeps, including my lucky jeep from Tadoba, gathering in her train. Finally she walked left from the road, setting rhesus and chital shrieking in alarm, and, as every Pench tiger I've ever sought has done before, she disappeared into the lantana and the rocky ground.

Now though my whole group has seen a tiger and my one-hundred percent client-tiger success rate is maintained. I have seen a Pench tiger too, after seven years of trying. All thanks to the grande dame of Pench, a tigress whose name is Collar Wali, the collared one.

Sunday, 15 March 2015

This morning at five-thirty it began, quite unexpectedly, to rain. Leaving for the park, I had no time to fetch my waterproof from my room. Instead I left my phone at reception, rather than have it soaked in a downpour. There was no downpour; in fact, after a few light showers, the clouds left and the sky was blue once more. My phone, and on it my camera, were sitting safely in reception at Svasara.

So it was only natural that we should see something extraordinary. Not a tiger. Since the weather changed while I was in Nagpur, the tigers have all but disappeared (just what you need when starting a tiger watching tour) and only one of my jeeps has seen one tiger once in four drives. The birds have changed too: the black-hooded orioles, so noisy and visible while I was here alone, have become difficult to find, and there are oriental honey buzzards everywhere. Sloth bears are also more readily seen, it seems, and yesterday afternoon my jeep saw two.

What we saw today was a leopard. We were searching the road between Jamni and Kolara for the male tiger who has been seen here three times recently. As we gave up and headed back to the centre of the park one of my clients, on the opposite side of the jeep from me, saw a leopard. And what a leopard! A male, draped along the branch of a tree, almost unobscured, just a dozen metres from us by the road. After two minutes' stillness, he gazed at us with icy eyes then, pure nonchalance, slipped down the tree. Surely now he would slink, in the manner of his kind, into the undergrowth. No, he sat at the base of the tree, in the open, and rolled on his back exposing his white belly (and all the evidence he was male) while yawning broadly. Magnificent!

As he walked away, still fully visible, along the edge of the road, another jeep approached. We signalled frantically for them to stop and the leopard froze in the shade of a stand of bamboos. Though closer, and with a clearer view, no-one in the other jeep could see him. The leopard, however, chose to break his cover and strode across the road between our jeeps, acting like a tiger but perfectly different: low-slung, lean body suspended between hips and shoulders, small head and bold, cold eyes. The leopard's beauty is incomparable.

Ours walked into the jungle beside us and soon was lost among the bamboos. For one of my clients this morning he was a first leopard. No other will come close in her memory. And in mine this mottled Marathi bibad will stride through a year, a quarter done already, spent in the company of big cats.

Thursday, 12 March 2015

I have spent the last few days in tiger-watching bliss in Tadoba National Park, writing each day what I've seen. Wifi at Svasara has been hugely too slow to upload videos so, now that I have returned to Nagpur to collect my Naturetrek Tiger Direct group for the start of their Tadoba adventures, here are a few short videos from the past few days.

Wednesday, 11 March 2015

Yesterday the park was closed. The tigers had a day off and I spent my time watching tawny coster and lemon pansy butterflies and petulantly cursing the tectonically slow wifi in this wonderful wild place. This morning the tigers chose not to work either: no pugmarks, no alarm calls, though a single jeep saw one of P1's cubs interacting with a small herd of gaur and another found the male Gabbar at waterhole 97.

This afternoon the tigers returned to work. We found Gabbar at the first Pander Pouni waterhole, resting in the shade of a small jamun tree. From here this powerful male strode across the short grass, setting sambar and chital calling in alarm. We moved quickly to the next waterhole where he appeared from the trees and entered the water, swimming through the deepest part as if to reach the island. But he stayed in the shallows at the island's edge and wallowed.

It was clear from his shaking head that he was distressed and the reason soon became clear. Across his bloody nose there were two deep slashes, caused no doubt in a fight with a rival male. The naturalists at Svasara speculate this may have been Namdev, the other dominant male in the area of the park we mostly visit. The two males' ranges seem poorly defined and there is much unrest among the tigers in Tadoba this year.

As, after his bath, Gabbar seemed inclined to stay in the long grass of the island, we opted to look for P1's cubs around Jamni, where one of them had been seen this morning. Good decision. Very good decision. Beyond Jamni we began to hear the low moan of an adult tiger, P1 we assumed, from the sparse bamboo and teak forest to our left. The roaring moved slowly towards the Kolara exit road, so, it hardly needs saying, we did too. After minutes spent nervously waiting in our jeeps, we heard the calls approaching the fireline, then saw P1 walk directly towards us, moaning as she came. She passed just feet from our vehicle, crossed the road and continued along the fireline on the far side.

My single guest Doug, from New York State, had never seen a tiger. This afternoon he saw two: a battle-scarred male taking his bath and a gorgeous orange female, roaring to the forest and all its inhabitants.

Monday, 9 March 2015

After heavy rain, such as we had last night, it becomes very difficult to see tigers, the more so on the shorter, hotter afternoon drives. Everyone knows this; except apparently the tigers.

In the first hour of this afternoon's drive, as this morning's, there was silence from the tigers. Then we met a jeep which had seen P1's two fourteen-month-old cubs. We moved quickly to the spot, where several jeeps had already gathered, and were richly privileged to see the male cub lapping water from an artificial pool right by the road. While he drank, some distance behind us his sister crossed the road to join him, though she was not seen again. Instead the male emerged from the forest ahead of us and crossed back, sleek, orange and handsome, like his lovely mother.

The mien of the cubs was quite different from that of the two adult females I have seen here this time, and many other adults I have seen here and elsewhere. Being a tiger cub is dangerous, a fact reflected in their secrecy and stealth. In a world full of unknown adult tigers, of wild dogs and leopards, of gaur mothers protecting their calves, of noisy jeeps and, sadly, of poachers, young tigers do well to blend with their forest home. Once they have reached adulthood it will be their prerogative to stroll along roads and hold up jeeps should they so choose.

Praise for his care around the cubs is due to Sanjay, our excellent park guide this afternoon. He knows the tiger closely and, though keen to share it with his guests, is respectful of the animals' need for space in which to behave naturally. To his credit he is also unafraid to berate colleagues who act less responsibly around the tigers, especially these precious cubs. It does no harm that Sanjay is also very funny, without the need for a common language with his guests.

While we watched, the cubs' father Gabbar was otherwise engaged. As we drove from the cubs we heard news that a tiger was sitting by the road ahead. It was our friend Maya, P2, relaxing in a fire-line (the clear strips maintained in the forest to prevent wildfires ripping through the whole park). Near her, though unseen by us, was Gabbar, intent no doubt on Maya bearing another litter of cubs for him. After a few minutes with us, Maya stood, looked nonchalantly in our direction, and crossed the fire-line into the forest. Her frame is squarer than P1's and she is most intensely orange across her shoulders, with a pale tawny covering her haunches; a quite different but also lovely tigress.

The time had come to leave the park but the forest had yet to surrender its final secret. As we rounded a corner I spotted a sloth bear right by the road. It stood its ground and peered at us, then, as other jeeps approached, turned and blundered into a stand of bamboo. To see one sloth bear on a trip is not guaranteed and is always a delight. To see two in a day is thrilling.

Not to mention three tigers.

Today, after a storm, with water in the hidden streams and all the odds against us, it rained cats and bears.

The sloth bear, or bhalu, is a shambling, hairy-eared, misshapen misanthrope; much, in this respect, like me. It leads a solitary, grubbing life in the forest and grassland of India, searching for termites, fallen fruits and flowers, carrion, and the nests of bees. At all costs it avoids contact with such dangers as tigers and humans, though sometimes inevitably their paths must cross.

Last night, after one o'clock, a violent storm beat Tadoba, spitting rain and lancing lightning at the land. The wind thrashed the grasses and puddles formed all over the park in the courses of streams. For a tiger watcher this is a disaster: tigers are most easily seen when the forest is driest and water is least available.

It was to a cool, damp, tousled park that we went this morning, knowing we had little hope of seeing a tiger. The usual pug marks were in the road, a female here, a male there, and distant alarm calls came from sambar. But for most of the morning the jeeps sat at well-known tiger (and jeep) crossroads, with no concrete leads to follow.

For our part, having seen a beautiful tigress the day before, we chose to leave the desultory huddle of jeeps and look for other wildlife. Thus it was today that the bear's path crossed ours, though the bear was only dimly aware of us and our intentions towards it were wholly innocent. It was first seen up a slope to our left, poking its long, brown, termite-snuffling snout from behind a tree, trying to ascertain what manner of disturbance we were.

Retreat, the bear decided, was the best course, so it loped away through light forest, and occasionally we saw its soot-black shape among the trees. Our driver and guide divined that it would cross the road behind us so we freewheeled down the gently sloping road to meet it. Our bear, unhappy on open ground, lolloped across the paved road as cameras clicked and smiles broke across our faces.

On a damp day on which tigers stayed hidden by pools in the streambeds, just one jeep saw a bhalu as the paths of bear and humans crossed once more in the great story of the forests of central India.

Sunday, 8 March 2015

This afternoon, in three hot dusty hours of driving, almost all my guests and I saw was a grey-breasted prinia. That this morning, while I was not in the park, four tigers and two leopards were seen didn't trouble me in the slightest. No, not me, not one tiny jot.

Today, as summer's heat mounts and the days grow longer, the park's afternoon closing time was extended to half-past six. Nobody had thought to tell the slender, marmalade-orange, radio-collared tigress known as P1, who inhabits Pander Pouni. So a moment before six she emerged from the dense bamboo at the road's edge, quite silent, and sat for two minutes by us before blending with the forest once more.

No doubt she was returning to her two fourteen-month-old cubs, left in the relative safety of a dry stream-bed. Their father, known as Gabbar after a Bollywood villain, is also radio-collared. Thus these two parents contribute, albeit without their consent, to the park's understanding of the lives of its tigers.

I love tigers - this fact should need no stating - but of all the tigers I have seen, I think I love the slender orange tigresses the most.

There are fewer guests at Svasara today, so this morning I did not go to the park. Instead I rose with the dawn and walked through its exquisite cool towards the Kolara gate, the one-day-waning moon fat and bright above.

In tiger parks both local staff and visitors are often too focused on the tiger, to the detriment of everyone's experience of the tiger's vibrant habitat. This morning, as I walked along the road to the park, through paddies and stands of brittle bamboos, the small folk of the forest and farmland filled my ears with their talk. Grey francolins sang from the fields, their bright repetitive cheeseburger cheeseburger ringing to the road from both sides. From the scrub at the fields' edge came the sci-fi chime of tailorbirds and the rising breathy whistle of an Indian robin. Overhead an Indian roller spat out harsh calls, its string-puppet display dark against the coming light of day.

On a bamboo picket a plain prinia - tiny - twitched its big tail and and gave its snappy buzz, telling the world that in its heart it was quite as big as the tiger. Its neighbour the long-tailed shrike rattled like a wound watch from the top of a bamboo kingdom.

Further, inside the park, I could hear the deep contented sob of the langurs, letting the forest know that all was well, that no leopard was near. Or so they hoped. From by them I heard the plummeting booms of greater coucals, and the disapproving purrs of spotted doves were all around.

Wind-up white-rumped munias whirred from the rice stubble and green bee-eaters hunched on the flimsy wires, waiting for the sun - their element - to heat the day before they flew. Under them was the small snarl of a red-breasted flycatcher and overhead bounded a grey wagtail, its sharp note taking me home to a clear river in North Norfolk, far away in space and thought.

There were hoopoes and paddyfield pipits, rose-coloured starlings cast in great flocks over the fields like fishermen's nets, coppersmith barbets and red-vented bulbuls too. In the park, perhaps, my new friends and their guests were watching tigers and leopards, sloth bears and wild dogs. But I smiled in the company of the forest's small folk on a rare morning of quiet and of song.

An Erythrina in flower at Svasara

Another Svasara resident, a bronze-backed tree-snake which caused consternation among the staff by trying to enter my room

Saturday, 7 March 2015

There is an hour in Tadoba, after dawn, which is borrowed from the night. Now all the animals of shade and darkness meet the dawn souls on their way to the day. Now still the chital shriek, telling the day that deep in the forest night's tiger still walks. Plum-headed parakeets dart from their roosts, dropping their bright calls to earth, and peacocks waft from the trees, sweeping the dust with their great night-starred tails.

Chital bucks, calm now the unseen tiger is gone, strut mechanical and bow their antler-heavy heads in show, moaning gruffly to their tear-eyed females. Nearby the sow-eared sambar skip on swift hooves across the rocky track.

This new day is full of noise: red-vented bulbuls burble happily and magpie-robins cut the cool air with their sharp, lovely talk. Grey junglecocks call shrilly all around and over dry percussive leaves a spurfowl scuttles.

The wild dogs dance in this dawn light too, four of them madly weaving in a glade, like shoaling ocean fish. And stately walks a leopard through the groves, its dapple and the bamboos' dapple and the dawn's dapple melting and melding into one.

All this we see and hear and feel and touch in this rare hour borrowed from the night, including, yes, the first Indian leopard of my year and of my Big Cat Quest.

Friday, 6 March 2015

... was so respectful of the tiger and its need for space that I failed to see one...

... helped my new friend Vihan, aged nine, to make a list of the birds we had seen together...

... and met a common trinket snake which had been rescued in a village last night and was released around the lodge tonight.

This afternoon...

... I caused our jeep's driver and allocated park guide to have breakdowns by insisting, with my guests, that we drive away from a tiger. Maya, the tigress we all saw yesterday, had been found late in the morning asleep right by the Navegaon road where most jeeps saw her. This afternoon she was still there, though now further from the road under a bush. There was a crush of jeeps on the road and it was hot so, my guests having seen her much better in the morning, we decided to leave her and look for other wildlife elsewhere. Our driver and park guide, relatively new to this game and used to guests who are interested in the tiger alone, were incredulous and refused to budge. How could we be so stupid as to want to move away from a tiger? We left her in the end and spent a lovely afternoon trundling through this beautiful park by ourselves, watching barking deer and ruddy mongoose, oriental honey buzzard and black ibis. By the time we left the park the tigress had still not left her bush.

Thursday, 5 March 2015

A tigress walked into my life at eighteen minutes past six this morning, a female known officially as P2 and affectionately as Maya, meaning illusion. She strolled, confident, along the road ahead of our jeeps for no less than an hour and forty-two minutes, stopping sometimes to sniff a tree, then to spray it with a swift lift of her tail, stopping once to drink from a chai-coloured puddle, disappearing once for a few minutes into dense bamboo. At thirty-eight minutes past seven she slumped into the road ahead of us and twenty minutes later - precisely - she stood and wandered on. Two minutes afterwards, on the dot of eight, she slipped between bamboo stands and was gone.

I am a guest naturalist at Svasara, a pretty, friendly lodge by the Kolara gate of Tadoba National Park. For the ten days before my own Naturetrek Tiger Direct group arrives, I have been taken under the generous wing of Ranjit and Nandita and their team of naturalists, and put to work guiding the lodge's guests. Yesterday in the afternoon my four Indian guests from Pune saw chital, sambar, wild boar and many birds. This morning they saw, for more than an hour and forty minutes, their first tiger, relaxed, about her own business along a jungle road.

At breakfast, by the Navegaon gate, from where a whole community has recently been moved, for the safety of the village and its livestock, and hence the safety of the tigers, I ask Svasara naturalist Jignesh about our tigress. From her face I had guessed her age at four years. Jignesh tells me she is five. 'When were you last here?' he asks. 'In 2012,' I reply. 'Did you see the female with four well-grown cubs at Pander Pouni?'

I did. I have seen this tigress three times before, as a youngster. And many times since in my mind.

About Me

This is a blog about wildlife. It is also a blog about the way human beings relate to wildlife: how we perceive it, how we portray it in pictures and words, how we treat it, and what it means to us. Equally, it is, in no small measure, a blog about the way we relate to one another.
My name is Nick. I am a naturalist and wildlife conservationist. Native to Norfolk, and home here again, I have been privileged to live and work all over the world.
It shouldn’t take much to realise that I neither have, nor claim, any affiliation with cheap car insurance, nor with meerkats. This blog’s name is a simple play on words, in homage to a piece of advertising genius.
Simples.
Now, about that wildlife…